Harvard EdX class Fall 2012

Is this the future of education? I signed up for a free course through Harvard's EdX program called "Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical & Public Health Research."

I know, I fell asleep in the middle there too. And this is a topic that interests me!

Taught by Harvard professors, this is a structured online course. I believe it's the future of education, and I'm very excited about this kind of instruction.

These are the smart guys, bringing their know-how to the online masses. Melikey.

First day of school 2012

Aidan and Vaughn, anyway.

Family fun in NYC

Here's a picture of the family in New York last year. We don't live in New York - in fact, we live pretty far away. As you've probably deduced, that means we were either visiting, or this was photoshopped. Of course, this is the internet, so I could easily have created a fake family and pasted them in, in which case you're probably marveling at 1) how amazing I am at photoshop and 2) how great my fake family looks. But that's not the case. They're real. Really. And awesome. But that goes without saying, since I am naturally biased in their favor. They're all awesome. And the little one? He's a handful.

The family consists of my wife Denise, Keaton, Aidan, and Vaughn. The life ring is no relation.

Vaughn loses teeth, gains shoe-tying ability

Vaughn was bound and determined to get his tooth out. Unlike most of us, who are content to let it wriggle, jiggle, cause a bit of pain, wait a bit, wiggle again, wait a day, and so forth, Vaughn spent a dinner wiggling that tooth, WORKING IT until it gave in and the victorious Vaughn could proudly claim that he had conquered his tooth - as indeed he had.

More recently(3/2012), Vaughn has learned to tie his shoes. It's a seminal moment, and he learned it cold today. Yeah, I'm overly proud of it. Update 8/1/2012: Vaughn's ability to tie his shoes matches his mercurial personality. One minute he's got it, but mostly it's an annoying task that needs to be done but he'd rather work around. Update 9/2012: Vaughn does not give a crap about tying his shoes. He's been fooling me this entire time. Anger imminent.

Aidan enjoys Hunger Games, magic, and basketball

Finished the Hunger Games book, loved it- a story Aidan and I enjoyed together as I read it. We started reading at night to Vaughn and Aidan, but Vaughn usually rolled over and dozed 5 minutes in. Aidan, on the other hand, loved the story, and we read more than the 1 chapter per day I had figured on fairly regularly. We both agree the movie was great. Woody Harrelson as Haymitch. I won't be introducing Aidan to most of Mr. Harrelson's other works anytime soon. Zombieland is my secret pleasure for a few more years.Among his many interests, Aidan includes magic tricks, basketball, and the video game Dungeon Defenders. Update 8/1/2012: Aidan adds Minecraft and iPad games to his videogame skill repertoire, and is enjoying swimming more and more as he applies himself to it. He has decided to play the trumpet in school this year. You can easily imagine what we will be going through as he learns to play the trumpet: imagine listening intently as Chuck Mangione plays a sweet lullaby on the trumpet. Now imagine that instead of Chuck Mangione, you are listening to a crying baby and you are also being tortured. I'm sure it will be fine.

Keaton sings 'Gary Indiana', plays guitar, trombone, and soccer

Keaton is proud to be in The Music Man, and as I've been in a few plays myself in my day, I have to say I'm pretty proud of his enjoyment of it. He is also a fairly accomplished guitar player, having played at church a handful of times in front of ~100 people. Frankly, he plays guitar better than I ever will. It's gratifying to see kids enjoy music for it's own sake. Now get a job, young man. Okay, perhaps 12 is a bit early for this sentiment.

He insists he doesn't have a girlfriend. When pressed, okay, he does. How do you know you have a girlfriend when you're 12? She has him as a screensaver on her phone. If that's not a binding social contract, I don't know what is. Update 8/1/2012: Keaton performed this summer with his jazz ensemble, and is learning Dorian scales. Whatever those are. Fancy. He's still in this so-called-relationship with a so-called girl, though I suspect that he's really making this up and somehow this is a metaphor for how he feels about Spongebob Squarepants. Kids are tricky this way.

Denise runs. A lot.

I'm not really allowed to say much about her on this site due to her mortal fear of me saying something inappropriate #TOURRETTES. She dislikes pictures of herself, but I'm sneaking one in anyway.She enjoys her Kindle almost as much as I enjoy my iPad, and loves to run - she completed her goal of 5 miles per day average in December 2011 - 155 miles! As of September, 2012, Denise completed her degree in eight months(total overachiever) and has been selected as one of the couple dozen employees to receive the CEO Excellence award - in a company of 10,000 employees. How can I keep up with this woman?!

Update: not trying to keep up anymore. If there is any keeping up to be done, it is in making notes here about how amazing this woman is.

As for me, my interests are pretty, uh, "eclectic", I guess you could say.

I've been working out a lot lately, owing to my wife's inspiration to lose weight, for the most part. We've followed a workout pretty close to Body For Life in the past, with great results, so we're sticking to that again, and the results this time have been equally impressive for us both in weight loss and muscle gains.

Working on projects in my garage is a lot of fun. I just completed a glow-in-the-dark skull table for our back patio. Which does not glow-in-the-dark. So you see how that worked out.

Like most men who grew up in the 80's, I am a sucker for video games - L4D and the odd RPG or tower defense game being mainstays.

Music gets its own page on my site, but I also enjoy reading and learning in general: about resume-writing. About business applications. About writing and economics from people who can write for lay-persons like me: Joseph Stiglitz and Steven D. Levitt.

I enjoyed learning about Astronomy and some of the lighter science around it, but have to say science in general is my weak spot. The recent discovery(ish) of the Higgs Bosun particle highlighted this. I still DON'T GET IT, sand and ping-pong ball examples notwithstanding.

Someday I will write the great American novel. It will probably be non-fiction, on a business or lifestyle-related subject, though I've dabbled with fiction way back when I was a kid and wrote fantasy. Writing is surprisingly hard, and requires an unusual level of focus over a fairly extended time period. Squirrel! Vignettes, maybe?

In short, I'm interested, generally, in a lot of things, specifically! Perhaps it is related to my liberal arts education at Whitman. I find that the sometimes the more I learn, the less certain I become - life's complexity is both enriching and frustrating in that way. I hope your walk through life is filled with much learning too!

Tony

I build table.

And here I built a table. I was going for a dinosaur, or maybe a snickers bar, but it came out a skull. Anyway, I liked it.

Note: the light paint is glow-in-the-dark! Unfortunately, apparently the clear urethane sealer I used is not conducive to light passing through it(see, clear, definition of), so while the skull is glow-in-the-dark paint, the skull does not glow. Or perhaps it's some kind of cosmic karma comeuppance thing, like "If you're going to waste your time building a glow-in-the-dark skull table, then it's not going to glow."